Food & Drink in East New York

By Brendan Fitzgibbons Dogs can pant to cool themselves down, but humans? All we’ve got is ice cream. Lucky for us, New York offers no shortage of chilly treats, from handcrafted scoops and smooth sorbets to fruity popsicles and milky, refreshing floats. Sit back, lower that body temperature, and enjoy these five spots for sweet treats. Ample Hills Creamery Prospect Heights | 623 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn One lick of Ample Hills’ ice cream, and you might wish you were on a hill of it. This Prospect Heights shop makes their sweet treats by hand using local and all-natural ingredients. Their menu of more than 20 ever-changing flavors includes options like The Munchies—stuffed with Ritz crackers, mini M&Ms, potato chips, and pretzels—or Salted Crack Caramel, which mingles saltine-based “crack cookies” with salted butter-caramel ice cream. The eclectic selection means that Ample Hills is that rare ice-cream shop where the adults are often just as excited as the kids. The ice-cream maestros recently opened a second location in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 5, as well as mobile carts that rove around Pier 1 and the Carousel. Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain Carroll Gardens | 513 Henry St., Brooklyn The employees at Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain are jerks—but that’s only true in the sense that they wear the word on their T-shirts. The store has a vibe that’s as friendly and welcoming as any establishment in Brooklyn, with delectable treats and floats to boot. The jerks’ signature drink, the Brooklyn egg cream, tastes like a chocolate water fountain of fizzy hope. If you’re really tired or need to be revived from cardiac arrest, you can also try the Wake Up Call, a coffee soda with coffee and a hearty glob of ice cream. Get a sneak peak of Brooklyn Farmacy’s new cookbook, The Soda Fountain, on The Groupon Guide. Cones West Village | 272 Bleecker St., NYC The multicolored scoops on the sign of this tasty West Village shop could be mistaken for a double rainbow. But the façade is only a taste of the wide range of Argentine gelato flavors available inside. Spread out in a massive cold case, they all look like they’re on trial for their sugary goodness. Try the coffee mocha chip, ginger, or tiramisu, and don’t forget the silky sorbets in flavors like cantaloupe, mango, and even chocolate. This is gelato that’s so good, it can even stand in for a trip to the bar: the whiskey-flavored gelato is so strong that customers have to show their ID. People’s Pops Multiple locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn Remember the popsicles you used to make as a kid? People’s Pops are not those popsicles. The menu reads more like a list of a sorcerer’s potions than a list of frozen-treat flavors: blackberry and lemon verbena, organic lemon and mint, rhubarb and star anise. Each People’s Pop is packed with the freshest local fruits, so enjoying one is like licking a deliciously cool farmer’s market. The artisanal shop began as a one-day experiment, but has since blossomed into four permanent locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, with pop-up stands at Smorgasburg and the Brooklyn Flea on the weekends. Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream Multiple locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn Everything about Van Leeuwen ice cream is classy. Just saying the name “Van Leeuwen” feels like you’re floating on a superior ice-cream cloud. At three locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan, employees scoop out flavors made with hormone- and antibiotic-free milk. Van Leeuwen also has a traveling truck that would make any normal ice-cream truck want to go back to ice-cream-truck school. Try the espresso and earl grey flavors, or ceylon cinnamon, which has a spicy, dusty kick. Van Leeuwen also keeps special flavors on rotation, including a sweet, sticky black rice flavor for the adventurous tongue. Shop Groupon for coffee and treats in New York City. People's Pops photo by Bethany Bandera. Brooklyn Farmacy photo reprinted with permission from The Soda Fountain by Brooklyn Farmacy and Soda Fountain, Inc. copyright (c) 2014. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Random House LLC. Photography (c) 2014 by Michael Harlan Turkell.

Ah, candy. It’s the universal childhood reward for being good, for completing a job well done, or sometimes just because. For people aged eight to eighty, nothing offers quite the same positive reinforcement as a piece of candy. The good news for any homesick expatriates or weary world travelers with a layover in New York City is this town’s abundance of candy shops, many of which serve international treats that can be hard to find outside of their country of origin. First a bit of classic American nostalgia, courtesy of Economy Candy on the Lower East Side. Established in 1937, it is one of New York City’s oldest candy stores, and after seven decades it has amassed quite a collection of candy brands, including rare local brands thought to be no longer made. The cramped aisles are packed with assorted sweets and confections from New York City and throughout the world. From Haribo gummy bears to cola bottles and rare brand gums and candies, there is something for every sweet tooth at Economy Candy. Mixed nuts, chocolates, dried fruit and loose candy assortments can be bought by the pound. Just expect to fight for space in the overwhelming storefront on weekends, thanks to a large influx of late morning Lower East Side brunchers. At Aji Ichiban on Mott Street in Chinatown, candy lovers maneuver around rows of tidy transparent bins full of Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian candies, plus dried fruits and random chocolates. Preserved plums (an acquired taste for some), kumquats and kiwis are just a few of the typical traditional Chinese candies that can be found here. For Western-style candy lovers, there is the ubiquitous gummy selection: soft, colorful and fruity bears, fried eggs (they taste like vanilla orange cream), alligators and others. But it’s not all about sweets here; a selection of savory Asian snacks from dried seaweed crackers to wasabi rice crisps give customers an opportunity to try some Asian-style alternatives to popcorn and potato chips. At Sockerbit on Christopher Street in The West Village, the clean storefront is stuffed with a wide variety of Scandinavian smågodis, or little candies. Selections like marshmallows, licorice and hard candies will look and taste nostalgic even to non-Scandinavians, thanks to lots of natural ingredients in the candies themselves. Here, candy lovers can mix and match, and come out with a colorful bag of cheery, interesting goodies.

The dim sum lunch, or yum cha (literally “drink tea”), is the Cantonese answer to Spanish tapas. It is as much a tradition in New York City's Chinatown as weekend brunch on The Lower East Side. The bustling scene is all too familiar: packed tables, servers pushing metal carts while hawking their selections, the din of impatient, hungry diners. They wait for shrimp dumplings, steamed pork spareribs, roast pork buns, pork and shrimp shu mai -- the seemingly endless variety goes on and on. But for vegetarians, the choices can be few. When it comes to dim sum, seafood and meat dominate the menu. New York vegetarians need not despair, because there are two very appetizing dim sum havens for non-meat eaters, and they’re right in Chinatown. Buddha Bodai on Mott Street serves a completely vegetarian and kosher menu of dim sum favorites, ranging from shrimp dumplings to beef rice rolls. The restaurant is usually packed on weekday lunch hours with City Hall municipal types, while the weekend clientele consists of tourists, locals and the environmentally conscientious. An all-day menu of vegetarian iterations of Chinese standards is also on offer, with creative takes on dishes like roast pork and sesame chicken. Using seitan, tofu and yam starch (among other vegetarian and kosher-friendly ingredients) as substitutes, many of these plates will fool even the committed carnivore in appearance and flavor. The line outside the door on Sunday afternoons may be the best way to spot Vegetarian Dim Sum House on Pell Street. Crowds tend to gather on weekends, anxious for healthy vegetarian takes on traditional dim sum dishes. The array of vegetarian dumplings -- pan fried, watercress, snow pea leaf, monk dumplings -- draw in voracious vegetarians who want the variety of a full-scale dim sum restaurant without sacrificing their principles or lifestyle choices. The menu is comprehensive, full of inventive vegetarian fare using Eastern and Western-style vegetables, not to mention an exhaustive list of diced, sliced or sautéed mushroom dishes. At Vegetarian Dim Sum House, there’s no need to solely imitate meat dishes. Here, vegetables are allowed to take center stage.